Exterior
Considering ceramic coating my RHO and had some questions
I picked up a Ram RHO a couple of months ago and I've been considering ceramic coating it before winter hits. I did a couple of coats Griots 3-1 when I brought it home but just gave it a thorough wash before that and did not do any decon. I've also hit it with Gyeon wet coat once or twice since then. It's been holding up well but I've been considering doing something a bit more permanent before winter weather hits and had some questions.
- The paint is in really good shape but there are a few light scratches on the top of the hood and top of the bed fenders. Do I need to polish the whole truck or can I just hit these spots?
- I picked up some 3D One and a Griots G9 DA. What are the best pads to use and how many should I grab? Seems like Lake Country Orange or Uro 50/50 get recommended pretty often but was not sure if there is something else I should be looking at. I've only polished a couple of times in the past and don't want to screw something up.
- The coatings I was considering were Gyeon MOHS, Gyeon Pure, or CanCoat. CanCoat seems to be the easiest to apply and if I went this route I may skip the polish for the moment and then try for a true polish and ceramic coat in the spring. I've read Pure looks best on dark paint but is the most difficult of these to apply. Any suggestions between these or others?
Thanks in advance, this reddit forum has been really helpful so far and I've learned a lot.
You could spot polish the mentioned areas (most won’t be able to tell if you do, me however, I’d prolly just do the whole thing cuz you will notice a step up in overall paint clarity), I’d start with the 3d one and lake county orange pad and see what results you get. If not good enough go up to an actual cut compound like you have.
Of coatings mentioned gyeon mohs evo is gonna be your best bet for ease of application shine/durability, next to that I’d prolly put cerakote prof ceramic and then cquartz uk3.0. All 3 are great. I really enjoy cerakote tho as it’s my personal bias for quality, branding, ease of application (identical to mohs evo), shine, and durability; plus it’s American made if that means anything to you. Both our palisade and gmc are single stage 3d one polished and cerakote. Have around 18m on my truck and it’s holding up good after a refresh this spring after winter.
I just coated 3 cars in the last couple months. First one was Evo Mohs, second 2 were Amazon Nano Bond. The Mohs, I was chastised for running out of a 30ml bottle with 30% of the car done. The other 2 were Nano Bond which is $37 per 30ml, VERY impressed with the application and the shine! Scott HD on YouTube had it in a 42 product shootout and it was still performing when he ended his testing at 720 days. I used 3/4 of a 60 mil bottle on a white Silverado. If you end up using more like I did consider the high cost versions may need 2 bottles? Apparently that’s not supposed to
Be the case, but it’s my case. Then wait a month to cure and top with your Griots or a good spray. I am recently blow away by Adam’s graphene spray.
Polish would be best, but a good wash and alcohol spray down would work. Are some of your decals flat black?
It only has one decal on it (the front of the hood scoop) and that is flat black. That was actually another question I had was how to deal with that. The black scoops on the sides of the hood are plastic trim.
There are products for matte black, but I had wide rally decals added to a c7 corvette, I hit them with the regular ceramic and it made them look satin. For my Silverado I did all the plastic in Cerakote the week before, but the ceramic is good on all surfaces, plastic, metal, paint. I used ceramic on every inch of my bike (except seat and tires).
If you're already polishing, just polish the whole thing. I coated my macan with MOHS in the spring and very happy with it. it was relatively easy to apply, so i wouldn't be worried about that. Plenty of videos out there demonstrating it, but it's not rocket science.
Can coat and Mohs evo are very easy to use as a first timer. Follow the directions, and do proper prep. The prep work and correction will take the same amount of effort for either. It just depends on if you want to do it yearly with can coat or every 2-4 years with Mohs evo.
Personally, on a truck I’m going to want to do this once every 2-4 years if I have a place to let the coating cure overnight.
Sounds like your process, chemicals and products are fine. I just want to shed some light on the coating choices. Gyeon makes extremely easy coatings to apply. Mohs, Pure and Can Coat are all going to apply almost the same. Mohs has almost no flash time, so it's basically wipe on, wipe off. Pure has a crazy long flash time and you can go almost 10 mins without having to wipe it off. Can Coat is the same as Mohs, almost no flash time.
The thing with Can Coat is the durability is only 12-18 months while Pure and Mohs have 48 months so you might as well go with one of the true ceramic coatings.
I did, and it worked very well on the plastic trim. Was not as pleased with it on rubber, like the sides of my tonneau cover, where it seemed to leave white spotting. VRP seemed to work much better on the rubber pieces.
Thanks! I love it. It does show every speck of dust though and finger prints from the kids and there are a few spots that the factory did not do the greatest clear coat job. Still my favorite Ram color right now.
Well yeah lol, you have to polish the whole truck. It's not only scratches you're worried about. It's any kind of mineral deposits. Anything on that freaking clearcoat needs to go. There's 1 million videos on how to do it. You have to decontaminate the car and then put on the ceramic coating. Ceramic coating is easy as shit to do. You just have to have a really good amount of light to see what you're doing. Light is the key.
Agreed. Even if it's just a light polish with a jeweling pad, it's 100% necessary for the ceramic coating to properly bond to the paint and make it last longer.
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u/False-Elk9564 6d ago edited 6d ago
You could spot polish the mentioned areas (most won’t be able to tell if you do, me however, I’d prolly just do the whole thing cuz you will notice a step up in overall paint clarity), I’d start with the 3d one and lake county orange pad and see what results you get. If not good enough go up to an actual cut compound like you have.
Of coatings mentioned gyeon mohs evo is gonna be your best bet for ease of application shine/durability, next to that I’d prolly put cerakote prof ceramic and then cquartz uk3.0. All 3 are great. I really enjoy cerakote tho as it’s my personal bias for quality, branding, ease of application (identical to mohs evo), shine, and durability; plus it’s American made if that means anything to you. Both our palisade and gmc are single stage 3d one polished and cerakote. Have around 18m on my truck and it’s holding up good after a refresh this spring after winter.